Mortality in a Nutshell
by GauntPlane58
Summary: Eye of Minds AU from chapter one. Michael tries to save Tanya from her demise below the Golden Gate bridge in LifeBlood. (I did fifteen pushups in the middle of it on spring break 2016) T for themes of thinking and minor profanity. This must be the largest Summary Block so far. If anyone contacts James Dashner and receives an exact timeline for the series I will be glad.
A/N: This story will be updated very slowly (like once every two months and at a very slow pace) due to my devotion to the Cadet program, my academic studies for grade 10, my backyard chickens and playing the game Invasion: Modern Warfare by Tap4fun. I am also figuring out how this website works (line breaks [Shift+Enter I know...] and why the tab button effect is erased so dialogue is messed up...[I think I will use some symbol for tab instead]) This story will hopefully spiral from third person to first person POV of only Michael, similar to how Anonymous58 wrote _Control._ I am also modifying the dialogue from the first and second chapters so they are similar to what I will write yet will contain the same information from the book so if you have not read the Mortality Doctrine series, it should not matter much. Please check my profile if you want to know more stuff/shit. My writing speed is approximately one paragraph per hour.

Michael walked against the wind, heading to the other side of the bridge. He saw the form of a human standing near the edge of the bridge to the side. _Great_ , he thought, mental voice filled with sarcasm, _now I have to contend with another suicide negotiation…_

Michael had been in a few of them before, within the virtual game _Lifeblood_ , of course, never in real life, right now, he was still in the Sleep, The VirtNet, a digital universe filled with every gamers dream. It was now the year 2 384, Michael was now sixteen. The virtual gaming system concept of using a player's mind as the console controller itself had been designed back in 2 021 and released the next year by Kayaba Akihiko as the gaming console for Sword Art Online. Whereupon ten thousand players entered a deathtrap made by the genius and sociopath, Kayaba.

 _Well, I do need to fulfil my experience points in this subject_ , Michael pondered over, _this is now my third, so I just need to successfully pull off this one and two more and I should be right in the making for LifeBlood Deep..._ Pulling up his NetScreen, Michael messaged both his friends in their group chat.

 _Hey, guys, I'll be late for another round of bleu chips, I have to go save someone from their own suicidal tendencies... LOL... I hate how the game takes away our experience points if we don't stop these depressed nobodies from jumping... I'll see you guys once this is over._

 _Yeahhh... I hate it too, I've lost 4 000 points when I failed last year or so... Took me three weeks to regain them... Damn idiots..._ _Sarah replied back._

 _You guys are amazing! Before this I've never heard of you two being so sadistic towards others..._ _Bryson entered._

 _Micheal figured he would now try and go to gain his future experience points. He put away the NetScreen back into the EarCuff where it was now hidden from view._

He walked near to the person to find it an older girl, _Probably seventeen or nineteen..._ Michael yelled to her, "Hi, I'm Michael, what might I call you?" It was probably a really stupid wording, _But oh well... Nothing to do about it now..._

Amazingly, the girl replied, albeit in a caustic voice. "It's Tanya to you, _Pretty-boy._ "

Micheal prayed to himself that his next sentence would not be as idiotic as his last one, _Yet at least she thinks I'm pretty..._ _She is kind of beautiful too, though I think having a suicidal girlfriend like this would drive me crazy..._ "You know that if you fall, the water will feel as if it were concrete, especially at this height. You can blame water to be a non-Newtonian fluid judging from the fact that if you fall at this height, it's like corn starch... though regularly it's a regular Newtonian fluid."

...

"Just adding food for thought, this is after all; the Golden Gate Bridge."

Michael could now see tears running down Tanya's face, her eyes reddening with irritation and her personality shifting to one of frustration and grief.

"You don't get it, do you?" She asked rhetorically, "Kaine and his KillSims are sic on haunting my very existence, You think you can stop him? This isn't about LifeBlood at all, I can't take a portal out! Reality doesn't belong to me anymore. I've been running for two months, I just want it all to end, even if happiness will invade my life, it's too much... I thought I could go after him – Kaine; with my coding and hacking skills. But it is amazing how wrong I was, Kaine himself seemed just within reach all the time, like I was close to exposing his secrets, yet, whenever that happened he always had the upper hand! She yelled. Her body started trembling noticeably.

"I'm sorry," Tanya announced in a sobbing yet loud whisper, "I should not have told you this – I've told you too much."

Michael knew by the time she had mentioned Kaine that this was serious indeed, _Kaine is a cyber terrorist wanted by the VNS, in fact, he's on the top of the list, crap... If this situation spirals out of my control, I could have the fecking Virtual Network Security up my butt nagging me. Shit..._


End file.
